STILLRAGIN’
THE DAY OF President Donald Trump’s
first State of the Union address is an
uncanny time to be calling Tom Morello.
For a lifelong guitar-wielding leftist, this
ranks as a jarring political moment. So
how is Morello’s mood right now?
“To put it succinctly, things could be
better,” he says with a disbelieving laugh.
“But I am hopeful that this neo-fascist,
racist, misogynist regime is bringing into
existence a movement that can not just
resist it, but do away with it.”
Morello was schooled in political
activism long before joining a fire-
starting rock band. His father, Kenyan
diplomat Ngethe Njoroge, was the
country’s first ambassador to the United
Nations. His American mother Mary
Morello founded the anti-censorship
group Parents for Rock and Rap in 1987.
Morello’s parents split when he was
young, and he grew up in Libertyville,
Illinois with his mother, who nurtured
his activist instincts. He took those
convictions to Harvard University, and
then to Los Angeles, where he met the
mercurial Zack de la Rocha and forged a
scrappy little band called Rage Against
the Machine.
Now, nearly three decades later,
Morello is bringing his supergroup,
Prophets of Rage, to Australia’s first
Download Festival. As he sees it, the core
conflicts haven’t changed.
“Injustice did not begin with the
Trump regime,” he says. “The two
constants in American society are
injustice and resistance to injustice. And
it’s an ongoing battle that we’ve been
fighting in our music for a long time.”
That said, the rise of Trumpism
gave Morello an urgent purpose. In the
heat of the 2016 presidential primaries,
the guitarist read a troubling CNN
chyron: “Trump Rages Against the GOP
Machine”. He took a screenshot and
tweeted, “This isn’t exactly what we were
thinking.” But it planted a seed: maybe
America needed a refresher on really
raging against the machine.
He recruited two of his favourite voices
in hip-hop, Chuck D of Public Enemy and
B-Real of Cypress Hill, to join him in a
new group. Together with Public Enemy’s
DJ Lord and the RATM rhythm section
of Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk,
Prophets of Rage was born.
“The band formed as an emergency
response to the 2016 election season, and
to provide a voice of dissent that moved
the goalposts far to the left,” Morello says.
“Then on tour we found out we loved
playing together and it wasn’t going to be
a one-off.”
That chemistry led Prophets of Rage
to record a self-titled album in 2017.
Produced by RATM collaborator Brendan
O’Brien, the album pairs Morello’s
familiar guitar sound with his “dream
MC team”.
“We wrote 10 songs in two weeks,”
he recalls. “It was the most supportive,
creative band atmosphere I’ve been in
since the making of the first Rage record.
At that point, we made the commitment
that this is an ongoing endeavour.”
While the album came as a welcome
surprise, Prophets of Rage is first and
foremost a live unit. A typical show breaks
up the new songs with RATM, Public
Enemy and Cypress Hill classics. “It’s
insane, dude,” Morello says, sounding
like an excited super-fan. “To be able to
write a setlist from those catalogues is an
abundance of riches.”
Morello’s politics are unapologetic,
but he knows not everyone in the crowd
shares his ideals. So how does he balance
the message with serving the mosh pit?
“There’s a very simple way of doing
it: it’s called rock’n’roll,” he says.
“That’s what we do first and foremost.
Our albums and our concerts are not dry
college lectures.”
Anti-establishment politics have
always inflamed Morello’s music, even as
the projects change. While RATM hasn’t
made an album since 2000’s Renegades,
Morello found success as a touring
member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street
Band and Chris Cornell’s wingman in
Audioslave. Needing an outlet to grapple
with the George W Bush administration,
he created his political folk alter ego
The Nightwatchman.
Morello sees plenty of reasons to keep
raging in 2018.
“The empowering of this kind of
anti-immigrant, right-wing point of view
is very dangerous on a societal level,” he
says. “Even more dangerous, however, is
the callous disregard for science [which]
could very well doom future generations
to an unlivable world.” But there are
signs of hope too. “Trump is the wrong
medicine for a very real disease,” he says.
“But as we saw with the huge women’s
marches, the increased activism and
organising spurred on by Trump’s idiocy
is cause for hope.”
Morello still gets a thrill from playing
his iconic RATM guitar riffs onstage. After
all, the power of ‘Bullet in the Head’ or
‘Killing in the Name’ doesn’t dim. “There
are a lot of young people in the audience
who weren’t alive when the first Rage
record came out,” he reasons.
But Prophets of Rage keeps his rebel
spirit sharp. “It was very important to
us from day one to not be some kind of
nostalgia act. We have the gravitas of our
history, but the chip on our shoulder of a
brand-new band.”
by Jack Tregoning (@JackTregoning)
» Prophets of Rage tour Australia 22–26
March, including Download Festival
Melbourne 24 March.
AS HE HEADS TO AUSTRALIA WITH HIS NEW BAND, PROPHETS OF RAGE,
TOM MORELLO IS AS FIERCE AND FIERY AS EVER.
PHOTOBYEITANMISKEVICH
THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 9–22 MAR 2018 35
STILL
RAGIN’